91–100 of 242 posts
Recognizing the costs of providing internet service, and then making a suggestion to pay a higher premium for additional service (i.e. privacy) is the logical way to resolve this.
The fact that this law has passed raises an interesting question: can a private citizen request and receive any and all information from a government entity about the users of that government's various assets? For instance: 1. Detailed data on the number, character, weight, etc. of every car that passes on a government road. (cameras record license plates, traffic videos exist, weigh stations are sometimes required f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They believe the FTC, not the FCC, should be the main privacy regulator as it has in the past. If they believed that, they would pass legislation to correct the law on which the court relied striking down FTC regulatory authority in this area and allow the FTC to actually do that; not doing that when reversing the FCC rules which mirrored the FTC rules which were struck down demonstrates that that is a pretext, not…
> they would pass legislation to correct the law on which the court relied striking down FTC regulatory authority in this area The FCC rule is being struck down using the Congressional Review Act [1]. CRA provides "an expedited legislative process" [2]. Giving the FTC authority in this area would require passing a real law. (That said, I agree with you regrind the explanation of motive.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/…
Right. But if the real basis of reversing the FCC action is not that the substance is wrong but the regulator is wrong, then you'd expect the fix to the law to allow the FTC to regulate to, at a minimum, be introduced first and highlighted in the debate over reversing the FCC action. (And, in fact, regular laws can be expedited as well, as was demonstrated procedurally with the AHCA, even if the votes were never there to follow through on the expedited process that was set up.)
Is there anything the average user can do to protect their data/privacy from their ISP?
Encrypted VPN that doesn't keep records (I like NordVPN, but have had good experiences with others like IPV and PIA), uMatrix, uBlock Origin, and don't forget to turn on your user agent spoofing options.
Unless someone can point out why it's not what it's cracked up to be? Seems like a rather easy-to-setup solution, somewhere between straight up paying a service and rolling everything yourself (I do pay PIA, but I've found that, not infrequently, my speeds are drastically throttled. I'll be actively downloading a file while connected at 400kb/s, cancel the download, disconnect from them, restart the same file, and be at 10mbit/s. I have no doubt some of that is due to the nature of the VPN, but I can't imagine all of it is. But, I'm not not a network engineer.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because why the push to undo something if they weren't planning to do it, or weren't already? I know Verizon has an opt in program for it where they gave you deals and free data.
Can't argue with that, but again, the status quo for many, many years was that your ISP could have done this, but didn't. And the next time there's a changing of the guard the protections will be put back in place, so I can't see how ISPs are going to bet on selling this information as a viable long-term business strategy.
Nope:
> The bill not only gives cable companies and wireless providers free rein to do what they like with your browsing history, shopping habits, your location and other information gleaned from your online activity, but it would also prevent the Federal Communications Commission from ever again establishing similar consumer privacy protections.
Also, a lot of things are broken. Voices are raised when something bad is actively done, not when something good isn't actively being done.
Do you get the difference? I am dismayed that the healthcare system is currently bad and has been bad for generations. Is it smarter to kick up a fuzz randomly out of nowhere, or to do it when there's legislation being made on it, in either direction?
Time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. I've watched the tech community battle back many times: PGP, SCO Unix vs Linux, WebStandards.org, etc. How do we fight this using software? Remember that many of the innovations came from single individuals. Is there a way to have a fully private, fast communication between two computers when we know everything we do is being saved and analyzed? Because that's all the Inte…
However, this headline is patently false, right? Congress didn't sell anything. They removed protections that were put into place late last year and hadn't gone into effect as far as I know.
Just because companies are legally capable of selling your browsing data doesn't mean that they absolutely will. As far as I know, my browsing history hasn't been sold by my ISP yet, and the regulations that were rolled back were not the reason why this is true.
Maybe I'm just posting because I like being a contrarian, but I do expect a more sober-minded commentary on this site than I've been getting on some recent news items.
If you're interested in the FCC's response, here is a primary source[0]. I don't buy most of it - I know that this is a lot of spin doctoring, particularly that second paragraph. But it provides insight to how the FCC is viewing this, something I haven't seen a lot of in this coverage.
Here[1] is some coverage from 2015 on the FCC/FTC issue that the third paragraph in that presser talks about. Also worth noting is this HN thread[2] from two years ago, where the top comment is a thoughtful critique of putting the hopes of an open Internet in the hands of a bureaucracy. People didn't agree, but that's the sort of commentary that keeps me coming back to Hacker News.
[0]: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017... [1]: https://iapp.org/news/a/ftc-officials-concerned-about-jurisd... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191007
I want a privacy first router. Does such a product exist? Key features: - I pay a subscription for maintenance (so I'm not the product) say $10/mo - Automatically routes all traffic over a VPN. - Smart VPN bypass for performance-sensitive traffic like streaming video and gaming - Provides non-logging DNS service - Automatic advertisement blocking For VPN, DNS, and adblock I want the option to use servers & block list…
Off the top of my head, I think they sold a router, mostly pre-configured with ddwrt, that you plugged in your info for PrivateInternetAccess and used them as the VPN. Could be wrong though.
Edit: Here's what I was talking about: https://easyvpnrouter.com/. May or may not meet your needs